The Turning Tide: Radiation, #1

By C. M. Lance

Commandos in Timor 1942. Love in postwar Hiroshima. Promises made and forgotten.
In 1982 Mike Whalen reluctantly visits his wartime commando base at rugged Wilsons Promontory, and is shocked to meet Lena, the granddaughter of his glamorous old friends, Helen and Johnny.
When Johnny died he left behind a burden of secrets, and as Mike is drawn back into Lena's family he's overwhelmed by his past: growing up in wild Broome, tragic guerilla missions in Timor, desire in devastated Hiroshima, betrayal in the jazzy fifties.
Before Mike can turn the bitter tides of memory he must rebuild his bonds with wartime mates and confront Helen, and himself, with the truth.
A saga of adventure, passion and redemption in WWII Timor and atom-bombed Hiroshima, by the winner of the Mountbatten Maritime Award and the Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Non-Fiction.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seabooks Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9780648985181

Book preview

To my family

1. Tidal River

The beach at Tidal River curves far away, a golden boundary between the mountains and the sea. On Little Oberon there are boulders half a hill wide, lifting like shoulders through the grey-green scrub. I could never put a colour to those rocks and still can’t. Tarnished ash, rusted granite, melted bronze?

I know it must be a beautiful sight. I remember a time when the morning light on those mountains would bring me to a halt with joy, but today I feel nothing at all.

‘Look, darling, it’s spectacular,’ says the post-doc’s wife. He’s staring out to sea and I expect he’s pondering some engineering problem. They’re a nice couple but I haven’t had much to do with them while he’s been in the department: we work in different fields.

I’ve reluctantly taken on the task of bringing them here to famous Wilsons Promontory before they return to London because no one else is free these holidays.

But I don’t mind the department owing me a favour, and in my long habit of numbness since Marion’s death I don’t expect this place to move me. Not now.

The woman turns to me. ‘I heard you were here during the war.’

To myself I curse the department’s gossipy secretary. ‘Yes.’

‘Has it changed much since then?’

I laugh shortly. ‘The beach hasn’t. The people have.’

Two good-looking youngsters walk past us with a bag and towels. The girl smiles at us.

‘So soldiers actually trained here? Extraordinary.’

‘Commandos. We’d swim off this beach—’

Commandos? Children. I look at the water and see naked bodies, splashing and chiacking in the surf, back from a ten-mile hike. I see Johnny and Alan lying on the sand. Dark-haired Alan face down, a book beside him; golden Johnny, grinning, sprawled on his back, shameless as a god.

I notice the youngsters shaking out their towels. The girl’s blonde hair swings around her shoulders and I feel a pang of memory.

‘Don’t forget the bus leaves at five,’ says the post-doc. ‘How long from here to Foster is it?’

‘About an hour. Let’s go.’

We walk back beside Tidal River, with its tea-brown waters that ebb and flow with the moon. Near the car park the couple divert to have a closer look at the commando memorial. I skirted around it earlier but there’s no avoiding it now.

The double-diamond and dagger shape on top looks like a TV aerial. Then I see the dark blue colour-patch up high. Must be made of enamel not to fade, I think, trying to ignore the thump in my gut.

I hang back but can’t help hearing the woman read aloud, ‘During 1941 and 1942 the 1st to 8th Independent Companies, the colour patches of which appear hereon and two New Zealand Units, were formed and trained in the Darby and Tidal River areas.’

‘That’s appalling,’ the post-doc says. ‘Doesn’t anyone know how to use commas nowadays?’

His wife turns to me. ‘Was your company one of those?’

‘Ah, the 4th.’

‘Which colour were they?’

‘I don’t remember. Look, we’ve got to get a move on or we’ll be late.’ I set off abruptly for the car. My throat is tight and I wish they weren’t here.

I take the high road between Fish Creek and Foster to show them the panorama from that spot where the grass is worn away from everyone else stopping, like us, to stare. There’s Wilsons Promontory, mountain after indigo mountain, across the water to the right. To the left, the rolling green Strzelecki Hills. Before us, fields dotted with sleek cows, and beyond, wide blue Corner Inlet. As it ever was.

My passengers are going on a tour for a week before returning home. Their bus is waiting near the park in Foster, engine rumbling softly. They thank me for taking them to see the Prom and the post-doc says how much he enjoyed his time in the department and we shake hands.

I say, ‘Must go, I’d like to be back on the road to Melbourne before dark, it’s a few hours from here.’ I wave goodbye and get into the car.

Then I surprise myself by driving down the street and booking in for the night.

––––––––

First I try the Exchange in the middle of town but the barman says they don’t do rooms any more, so I go to the nearby motel instead. The walls look as if they haven’t been painted in twenty years, but the bed is comfortable.

I hear the occasional car passing outside as the light fades and cool air drifts through the half-open window. I get up, shut the window, put on my jacket and walk over to the Exchange for a meal.

The steak isn’t bad, nor the beer. Better than back then, anyway. The fire’s a pleasure too, and I have another beer so I can watch the flames through it. I realise the girl serving at the bar is the one I saw at the beach this afternoon. That’s not surprising, Foster’s a very small place. She reminds me a little of Helen. But not really.

The toilets are inside now, not out in the yard. I suppose the old ones are long since demolished, along with the letters I carved in the wall with a pocket knife that night before leaving for the Prom. M-H. My fingertips tingle with memory.

I don’t expect to sleep well but I do. Still, I’m alert at first light and lie there snug in the warm, hearing the sweet gurgle of magpies in the dawn outside. What will I do today?

It’s the holidays, Easter 1982, with no reason to rush back to Melbourne. The children have their own lives. Terry’s a teacher, two kids and a nice wife. Sue’s a vet, never married, lives with her friend Gail. The situation was always clear to me but it used to worry Marion. She said a mother shouldn’t ask, but I expect, after everything, she didn’t want to know.

The bathroom is cold but the shower’s warm and my shoulder gradually loosens up. The face in the mirror, all auburn stubble and rust-grey hair, doesn’t much gladden the heart, but at least I’m still lean. If I squint—a lot—I can almost see the tall young man who used to swim at Tidal River.

I keep a small bag of essentials in the car so I’ve got the means to civilise myself: that’s what my dad Danny used to say, shaving with his open razor in our humid bathroom in Broome, on the other side of the country. Dad, with the same green eyes as me, dead these ten years now.

I pay for the room at the desk and buy some apples at a shop. I get into the car and head back to the Prom.

––––––––

I’m enjoying the drive, the views from the hills and the low Yanakie fields, looking forward to the rising switchback past Darby River and that breathtaking moment at the top when you come round the corner and there’s Bass Strait right in front of you, with all those rounded rocky islands like the Prom’s baby mountains.

I wonder for an instant why I’ve stayed away for so long, but then I remember why. I’m almost at the Darby Saddle when I see a car by the side of the road.

The rear tyre is flat and a girl in jeans is looking into the open boot. I pull over, get out and ask if I can help. Unsurprised, I realise she’s the girl behind the bar who’d reminded me of Helen: this really is a small place.

She looks at me with gratitude, then recognition.

‘You were in the Exchange last night,’ she says. ‘Thanks so much. The spare’s flat as well, damn it, I meant to fill it up the other week.’

‘That’s no good,’ I say. ‘Can’t use my spare either.’ My car’s one of those little Japanese things—used to be my wife’s—but this is a big old Holden.

‘Can you give me a lift to Tidal River? They’ve got a public phone and I can ring my boyfriend.’

She takes her bag from the front seat and we settle into my car. I’m a little surprised she’s so trusting, but then remember that’s how it is in this part of the country.

‘I’m Mike Whalen, by the way,’ I say.

‘Lena Erikssen. This is great, you coming along. There’s so little traffic out this way in the mornings. I wanted to grab a swim, won’t be many nice days now before it’s too cold.’ She considers me. ‘Weren’t you at the beach yesterday too?’

‘I was showing a couple of tourists around. Thought I’d have a quiet look at the place again today by myself.’

Her hair is wavy and reddish blonde, I see now, and her eyes turquoise; not the same as Helen’s thick gold hair and sea-blue eyes. But she still looks familiar.

‘I used to know an Erikssen family here, oh, forty years ago now,’ I say. ‘Not related to John Erikssen by any chance?’

‘He was my grandfather. He died in the war.’

‘Good God. You’re Johnny’s granddaughter?’

At that moment we get to the point in the road where you come round the corner and there in front of you, like a revelation, is the teal of the water and the high soft clouds and the round silvery islands. But this time I see gold, not silver. Just gold and blue.

‘So your grandmother ... Helen? Is she—?’

‘You know my nana?’ Lena says. ‘She’s great. I’m named after her. Well, sort of.’

Of course. I pull over to look at the view. A pain I cannot believe possible twists my heart for a moment.

‘I never get used to the sight either,’ she says, glancing at me.

We go back onto the road and ten minutes later we’re driving into Tidal River. I point to Mount Oberon rising steeply to the left.

‘We had to run up there when we started training. If you couldn’t make it they sent you home.’

‘You and my grandfather?’

‘Yeah.’ I smile at the thought of Johnny, glorious Johnny, called a grandfather. But no, he was never a grandfather. He barely got to see his son, let alone this nice young woman.

I drive slowly along the narrow road past the few blocks left from the war. They took the huts away after they moved the training school to the tropics in 1943.

Some bright spark realised, yeah, this place was usefully brutal as hell, but maybe stinking hot and wet, not freezing cold and wet, might better prepare men for island war.

Stupid idea. Nothing could have prepared us for that.

––––––––

Lena rings her boyfriend from the public phone and tells me he’ll be at her car in an hour with a new tyre, then he’ll come and pick her up.

‘Sounds like a nice bloke,’ I say. We’re eating apples and walking along the track to the beach.

‘Chris? He’s fine. But I’m not in any hurry to settle down, I want to travel first. And I’m doing uni—second-year physics.’

‘Physics?’ I’m impressed. ‘Which uni?’

‘Melbourne.’

‘You’re kidding. I lecture in engineering there.’

‘What, you’re a real professor?’ she asks teasingly.

‘You’d better believe it, young lady,’ I say with mock dignity.

We’re walking over the sand towards the water. A few people are scattered around but the only sounds come from the hissing surf and the seagulls.

‘Nana’s pleased about uni. She hopes I’ll end up teaching at the local high school, but I think she knows I’m off to see the world first!’ She laughs and suddenly I see her dimples, like Helen’s. She gets her towel from her bag.

‘Can you mind my stuff, Mike? I really want a swim.’

Lena takes off her jeans and T-shirt. Beneath she’s wearing a one-piece blue swimsuit. She walks away towards the water, completely at ease in her youth and beauty. For a moment she’s so much like Helen my eyes sting.

Since losing Marion, things long forgotten have been rising like wraiths around me, and dear God I wish it would stop. Every fucking moment reminds me of something else, till I’m exhausted with trying not to remember. Or exhausted with remembering. And now this. No wonder I never came back before.

I sigh and lean back and lie down with my old canvas hat over my face. The air is comfortable in the hazy morning sun. My thoughts gradually slow and I doze.

After a time I hear Lena come back and lie down on her towel. A while later she gets up and calls out and runs towards the path. I roll over to see. She’s hugging a muscular lad, then they walk hand in hand towards me. As they get closer he stares hard at me for a moment, then grins. He’s clearly reassured I’m no threat to his Lena.

Funny. That’s how Johnny used to look whenever he saw me with Helen.

––––––––

We walk back to the car park. On the way Lena stops to gaze at the commando memorial and this time I’m prepared.

‘I always wonder what he was like, my grandfather. In the photos he looks sort of fun, always smiling. Was he like that?’

‘Yes. Yes, he was a good bloke, laughed a lot, kept everyone amused.’

When he could, I think, when he wasn’t in pain from dysentery or malaria or tropical ulcers, or no boots and no food and no sleep. When he wasn’t being tortured.

Lena says, ‘I live with Mum in Foster when I’m not at uni. But Nana’s further out in the hills. You know she remarried after the war? But she’d love to see you.’

‘Actually, I have to go back to Melbourne now,’ I say. ‘I don’t think there’s any chance of getting to see her today.’

Lena borrows my notebook and writes down Helen’s phone number and address.

‘Promise me you’ll go and see her sometime?’

‘Yes, of course. Give her my best wishes, say I hope she’s well.’

Lena looks at me, doubt in her eyes. Chris calls, ‘Leen-ah,’ from the car.

She puts her hand on my arm. ‘Thanks so much, Mike. I’d have been stuffed if you hadn’t come along. You promise?’

‘Yes,’ I say. I’m tired.

She beams and hops into Chris’s car, waving as they pull away. I open my door and sit down heavily. The car park is where the old parade ground was. I can hear magpies again, calling tree to tree. I think of this morning, the first time I’d looked forward to the day in ages.

Dear God. Why didn’t I go home yesterday?

––––––––

I drive back along the road through Fish Creek to Meeniyan, avoiding any possibility of Foster, even from a distance. Old Harry O’Brien would take me that way sometimes in the cart. I can smell the big brown horse for a moment, feel her velvet ears, hear her snuffle, as she nibbled grain from my hand. Betty? No, Bessie.

Betty was someone else entirely. But her eyes were as brown and her lashes as long: I laugh at my absurdity. Oh, Betty my dear.

The O’Briens had been in service with Mum’s family before the Great War, then they bought a small dairy farm here. Sally O’Brien looked as tough as nails but she was kind to me when I was so homesick: only seventeen and soon to attend the great University of Melbourne.

My parents thought a few months on a farm before starting uni would do me good. They didn’t want me hanging around Broome with nothing to do. Not because they didn’t like having me there—Mum was red-eyed for days before I left—but because of Betty. They worried we might be getting too close, too young.

No, don’t think about Betty, I scold myself, or Ken. Don’t think about the Egawa kids, friends of my childhood in that red and green and turquoise place, so different from anywhere else in the country. Almost alien.

Alien. Funny word. That’s what they used to call Betty and Ken’s dad, Yoshi. And their mum too—Australian-born, but always Japanese. Always alien.

I sigh. Stop it, you old fool. Concentrate. I’m here now, driving in this rich green and blue countryside, an academic close to the end of his career, an adequate researcher, not a bad teacher. But I’m back there too, a boy yearning for the colours, the smells, the sounds of red-dust Broome, two thousand miles away.

The O’Briens worked me kindly—harvesting, milking cows, repairing, keeping me busy on the endless tasks around the farm—until it all slowly became familiar. Their small weatherboard farmhouse, off the appropriately named Muddy Lane, was surrounded by green fields running down to Corner Inlet.

Across the water was the Prom, and sometimes from my bedroom I’d watch sunlight and shadows dancing over the mountain peaks for hours.

I turn onto the highway and keep going. The road humming past, I think of young Lena and the first time I met Johnny, her grandfather. Harry brought him to the stable one day when I was feeding the horse.

‘The Erikssen lad,’ Harry said, ‘come to give a hand with the harvesting.’

He was tall and strong, fair-haired with a slow smile. ‘Johnny Erikssen,’ he said, and shook my hand like a man.

Johnny was great company, easy to work with, no shirking, no bullshit. I would have been in awe of him except he was so down-to-earth. A year older than me, he was as charmed by my life in exotic Broome as I was by his in green-blue Gippsland.

His family were Swedish, common background in this area, and when they weren’t working on their farm they were fishing. Corner Inlet fish were famous, Johnny would say, served in the best of Melbourne’s restaurants. I’d grown up sailing small boats and was happy to offer him a hand.

Johnny’s family lived not far from Foster on the road to Port Franklin, a little harbour at the mouth of a river, all mangroves and small scuttling crabs. It reminded me pleasingly of Broome.

During very low tides Corner Inlet’s blue waters would drain away, revealing acres of seagrass and rippled mud, again like Broome. As a child I would watch the moon rising over Roebuck Bay, the strips of light on the mudflats like a ladder to the sky.

That summer in Foster was idyllic. I was anchored, safe, harboured by the green hills around me and the Prom across the water, as I worked with Johnny in the paddocks or out on the boat or milking the cows at dawn.

Often I’d breathe the scent of mown hay and be filled with a great joy: as if I were about to glimpse something wonderful, something I’d never thought possible, something I’d wanted, without even knowing, all the brief years of my life.

2.  Foster

Johnny and I stayed mates even after I went away to Melbourne in early 1939, because I’d go back to Foster in the term breaks to help the O’Briens.

University wasn’t easy but I’d been at boarding school in Perth and was used to study and keeping my head down in a crowd of lads. In any case, I enjoyed the work.

In third term I started going out with a girl I met in a pub one night. That was Kitty, dark-haired and quiet, a secretary in an insurance company. She’d let me feel her small round breasts through her jumper, no further. But just being allowed to kiss her was a revelation.

It was a shock that September when war in Europe started. The threat had rumbled on for so long it hardly seemed real. Of course, Britain’s war was Australia’s war and change happened quickly. One of Johnny’s brothers joined the 2nd AIF in October 1939 and was sent to Palestine.

Johnny itched to join up too but was needed at home to keep the farm going. I stayed put as well because the government didn’t want to take recruits from universities or industry, or anywhere vital to the war effort.

*

I walk quickly along the Carlton street through the wet leaves, hands in my pockets and shoulders hunched, expecting the rain to start again at any moment. A colleague is with me who wants to have a chat over lunch about the latest reshuffle in the department. I’ve lived through so many I barely notice them, but he’s young and still thinks it matters.

We enter the lounge of the Royal Oak as the rain begins and order lunch. As my colleague frets about his future I tell him not to agonise, he’s safe for now.

He’s unmollified and goes over the state of play again. I watch the flames in the fireplace and eat my sandwich and nod every now and then. He’s a good lad but I wish he’d shut up.

Looking around, I’m pleased to see the old pub hasn’t much changed over the years. In early 1940 my parents came over to Melbourne for a few weeks, and this was where we’d had lunch one afternoon. I took my girlfriend Kitty along to meet them.

When they saw her, Dad got that expression he’d use when he was being careful (something about his eyebrows always gave him away) but Mum—Lucy—was lovely, just as she was to everyone.

She must have been in her late forties then, grey streaks in her brown hair and laugh lines around her eyes. I thought she was beautiful, but then I always did. Kitty seemed to enjoy herself, though it was hard for her to keep up with our family jokes and fast-moving gossip.

The weeks of my parents’ visit passed quickly. We took the train to Foster and visited the O’Briens, who hadn’t seen them since before the Great War. There was a lot of talking about people I’d never heard of, but Mum was so happy it didn’t matter.

My parents met Johnny Erikssen too and liked him. That night was the first time I ever stayed at the Exchange. Mum said how nice Kitty was but I shouldn’t rush into anything, I was still studying, shouldn’t tie myself down. Dad grinned and didn’t say much.

My parents sailed home to Broome in February 1940. I was a little sad when they left and Kitty took pity on me.

One night we went to the cinema to see the Marx Brothers and laughed ourselves silly. I thought Kitty looked a bit like Maureen O’Sullivan and said so.

She was pleased and after I’d walked her home to the rooms she shared with her friend Dottie, she asked me up for a cup of tea. When we opened the door we found Dottie was out.

We were soon lying together on the couch, arms around each other, legs and clothes entwined and hot. I’d assumed it was to be another evening of aching frustration and limited liberties, when Kitty whispered shyly into my neck, ‘Would you like to lie down in my room?’

I had imagined this moment over and over, breathlessly wanking, but hadn’t thought the details through very precisely. All I could do was nod, get up clumsily, and follow her to a neat little bedroom.

She undressed, draping her clothes over a chair as if she were by herself, until she was wearing only her white brassiere and panties. She pulled back the cover and lay down on her single bed.

I somehow got out of my clothes and sat beside her in my underpants, tented by an erection I pretended not to notice. I leant down and kissed her, wriggled into bed and pressed against her. At last, at last, oh thank you, Lord.

After a moment of awkwardness I managed to get the brassiere undone and finally saw those adorable breasts, more beautiful and mysterious than I’d ever imagined.

I stroked her nipples and thought, how could this be happening? Amazingly, she caressed me with her pretty hands and pulled my underpants off, kissing me all the while.

Then she turned away, reaching to her bedside drawer. ‘Mike, we need protection,’ she whispered. She handed me a small rubber object and I managed, awkwardly, to get the thing on.

I still feel shame today at my shock. Kitty wasn’t a virgin, she knew what to do. She even had a stock of frenchies in her drawer! But the shock certainly wasn’t enough to stop me in my tracks. I pulled her panties off and rolled on top of her.

She parted her legs and guided me inside to a heat I hadn’t expected. Dazed with smoothness and thighs and belly and breasts I lasted only a minute or two, but in the glorious wave of climax was shocked again to realise she was returning my thrusts, utterly lost in her own pleasure.

Oh Kitty. What a gift you were.

––––––––

I’d promised to go down to Gippsland to the O’Briens’ farm after my parents left, so had an excuse to get away a day or so later, part exultant and part ashamed at leaving Kitty so suddenly. As the train